/lit/ - Literature

>>11975390
they don't touch each other, the 'touching' or 'interaction' is mediated by the fundamental forces, which themselves do not directly interact as much as overpower each other at different scales according to the force carrier particles. these things are distinct from each other in the way oil is different from water. so if you look at strength and range you can get a feeling for at what distances one of the four force dominates, and if you look at the particle you see the irreducible 'thing' or 'substance' that mediates the interaction.

gravity bends reality (spacetime, the strata of the universe) and this is how it interacts with electromagnetism for example. this is what physicists believe. weak force is radioactive decay, strong force is the binding of atoms together which allows us to have baryonic matter (every "thing" that interacts with light through absorption and emission). gravity is still a bit of a mystery. electromagnetism is the full spectrum of light from gamma rays which are very small and energetic to radio laves which are very large and have less energy, a transformation between electricity and magnetism occurs using maxwell's equations and the lorentz force.

that's why i have been arguing ITT that experience has been left behind, because the idea that nothing touches anything else is outside the normal understanding of electrostatics and friction at human scale. but indeed, things are not actually touching.